This British Author Said Violence Against Women And Girls Is A Men's Issue, Sparking A Conversation
"Women have been doing the heavy lifting on it," Bernard said in an earlier interview. "But it's men who need to change."
A video of British campaigner and author Andrew "Bernie" Bernard explaining how violence against women and girls is a men’s issue is going viral online after a court in the UK allowed three teenage boys who gang raped two teenage girls to walk free.
Bernard is a British campaigner and author who tours schools and colleges across the UK talking to boys and young men about masculinity, pornography, coercive control and violence against women and girls.
In 2012, his sister Sarah Gosling was fatally stabbed by her partner after more than a year of escalating abuse.
Since then, Bernard has spent more than a decade trying to reach young men before the violence starts.
In his video shared on March 10 on his Instagram account @whatmakesaman, Bernard said violence against women is actually a men’s issue that manifests as a woman’s problem and it is upon men to solve it.
“Men don't want to hear it. That they are a solution to the problem, that they could influence their friends, that they could call out their mates, that they could change their behavior and make women safer,” he said.
"Women have been doing the heavy lifting on it," he said in an earlier interview. "But it's men who need to change."
Bernard’s video gained more than five million views and 500,000 likes after the high-profile gang rape case that shook the UK.
The three boys in the case, two aged 14 and one aged 13 at the time, had gang raped two girls aged 15 and 14 in two separate incidents in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in November 2024 and January 2025.
The attackers filmed the assaults and shared the footage with abusive messages about the victims on social media.
They were found guilty of a total of 10 counts of rape between the three of them, as well as taking indecent images of children.
However, the judge, Nicholas Rowland, sentenced the boys to youth rehabilitation with not one day in prison on May 21, saying he wanted to avoid “criminalizing” the boys, sparking public outrage.
More than one million incidents of violence against women and girls are recorded by the National Police Chiefs' Council every year in England and Wales, according to Bernard.
Bernard said in an interview that he believes the key to change lies in curating the culture, making men hold other men accountable for small behaviors before they escalate into larger ones.
Nyx Joy
Cherry Mohamed
